Really, 5 1/2 hours of sleep does go quickly when you surprise even yourself in going to sleep. To let you know about the extent of people sleeping in this place: Yvonne had already taken a shower and had woken us up on her way back from the shower, as well as this, her sister had already left to meet us at the major bus depot. So, even though 5 1/2 hours of sleep is bugger all, people think this 5 1/2 hours is enough and even plenty in circumstances. Then again, while home Yvonne would try and go about having three showers a day… to my one, maybe two on a real stinker.
Talk about the guy I was, er, sleeping with, being so great, he gave us the keys to his bike (moped, actually) to which we would use to get to the station with, and meet Yvonne’s sister. I think the bus left at 6.30am. After leaving the living quarters at just after 5.15am, we had one near miss accident… my that was tied around my waist had gone about slipping around a little and the longest section was only millimetres from the bike’s tyre, but a lady gave enough gestures to allow for us to realise the problem at hand, while she overtook us. I don’t know about how much clarification I have given readers, or how in depth people are reading, but the great thing about having so many bikes on the road is the extensive lanes of bikes only that had been cordoned off with mini concrete barriers with minor breaks between them every 1.5m, or so. This would allow bikers to crossover between car lanes and bike lanes. Real interesting is the concrete barrier height being small enough to allow for children or donkeys to drag along the carts with a wheel either side of the barrier, diminishing danger to both themselves and the fellow traffic.
At the bus station, we met her sister, bought our tickets and said goodbye to her sister. By then it was 6.26am, perfect timing for the bus. We were also early enough to be able to get a seat, which at departure was all gone and had about 15 people standing. Off to Ouahgouya we were. In between sleeping, tickling being informed about the bus stops at each town, and the basket vendors with food and water, it was a bit over three hours before we got to Ouahgouya. Now, the length of the journey really was something, but the best of it did not come until we had jumped off of the bus. Just before we had gotten off I noticed three others who had jumped off, kind of awkwardly.
After we had gotten off of the bus, I looked over to the three people who had gotten off of the bus to notice they were two criminals and a police officer. The criminals had their own feet cuffed, but one cuff was between the right guys left hand and the left guys right hand.
One kilometre down the road was the place we were looking for: Yvonne’s older sister’s place. She was actually at work now, and we met two people, an old friend of Yvonne’s and a girl who seemed to help around the living quarters area. It was kind of strange, her pottering around and the means in which she went about it (compared to both Western styles of pottering and what I had seen of similar positioned people in Burkina Faso). While Yvonne was studying something similar to Economics, her friend was in the midst of exam mode (kind of) for her nursing degree. And while Yvonne and I were both talking to her and lazing around a bit, she was not studying. Then the lack of sleep and the extensive bus trip up took its toll. Yvonne and I pulled out a mattress and slept for, well my guess was about 1 1/2 hours. Being already after midday, it was actually kind of perfect timing for lunch. Moving things around conveniently we ended up having, well, a rice dish with a stew incorporated in with it. This might sound like a monotony in flavour, but the variety of stews, even with fairly consistent ingredients, was incredible. It seems to have slightly spicy food, with spices to add, with overly sugary drinks, seem to be a fairly common trend. Sounding either rude or a little blunt, this was enough proof to see why their teeth seem to be on average a little more deteriorated. What am I comparing this to? Honestly I do not know, but imagine those people who have consumed tonnes of sugary carbonated drink, and yes you know that one of the worst offenders to this is Coca-Cola (and they get away with it), and they tend to either have discoloured teeth, or what I call shark teeth, where you could nearly fit a bus between neighbouring teeth due to the acid effect. I just mentioned this because the sweet drink we had for lunch was along these lines, wow, enough of it could probably give you the jitters with so much of an intense energy hit.
A short while after we had eaten, and were in fact outside feeling sorry for our stomachs, Yvonne’s sister had come back from work, she was a Maternity Nurse and had delivered three babies today. The only similarity I was able to see between the sisters was their height. After talking for a while, Yvonne’s sister eating and then needing to go for a nap, Yvonne thought it best to do a little tour guide with me, on her sister’s bike. The thing we should have taken into account was the midday sun (1330 heure).
She showed me the surrounding area, from basically most directions of the establishment (the extent of the suburbs), as well as trying to show me Sugri-Doogos in the region. Floods had caused minor issues in some places, thus enough to make us backing away from getting too far out of town. The out of town ride was great to see things on a more obvious scale, from how people from ‘nearby’ villages would travel to the major centre with their products, and upon finishing with this go on the long walk back home. This was more obvious, compared to Ouagadougou, due to the sudden alteration from suburbia to rural land. People were also pleasant enough to give a smile, or wave, as we passed., maybe white person syndrome, or maybe their typical nature, I will not know for the time being.
Back in the built up region, I was amazed at several things. Considering Ouahgouya was the third largest city, they had one huge market. The reason why this was being larger then what seemed to be Ouagadougou’s largest market, well, Ouagadougou seemed to have a number of markets happening on majority of the days of the week, whereas this seemed to be the only central hub for the market industry, thus intensifying the numbers that much more. Typically I would see only Christian structures spiring into the sky, but here there seemed to be a domination in the Musim symbol, crescent and star, piercing the sky. The country is apparently, in a rough manor, split in half physically with its religious standing. Many things did stand out, but the third main… item, was the lack of sanitation. Garbage was strewn about everywhere, sometimes in non conforming piles, other times semi deteriorated with weather into the dirt road, other times running down streams of water that had been created via people throwing out their finished grey water (from washing, and similar). The reason for this mentioning is, as I would hope you would be aware of, the stench, the overpowering stench that it seemed only I was aware of. Not even Yvonne seemed to comment about this. This may be due to either sincere lack of knowledge, or from attempted ignorance, but definitely something I did not want to yet bring into conversation.
We saw the main gathering point for festivals, the hospital where her sister help pop out the babies, and a strange sight, yes a very strange one indeed. We saw another Nasara. This actually got Yvonne quite jealous. This Nasara, to me, tickled no fancy whatsoever, but being Nasara she drew my attention. It got me wondering how much of a friendship, or relationship, Yvonne and I were in, did I actually do something that would mean we would be forever and ever, amen? It was only a short lived annoyance as the heat had begun to take it’s toll. Being the one needing to concentrate, and also getting the brunt of the sun on her, Yvonne was, unknowing to her, troubled with heatstroke.
Being near her sister’s place, we were soon back there, with Yvonne claiming a lack of sight at times. Finally back, we were able to get some water into her, as well as lying down. Minutes later she had fallen asleep. This did not matter too much by now, as her sister was still in sleep mode, and her friend was trying to study. The younger girl who had been helping around the place was also in the process of setting up her own mat for the siesta. I think it was just before everyone started dropping like flies that Yvonne’s phone rang, it was for me. Donat, who was sounding fairly weak. He was still feeling sick, had taken the day off of work, and I think had forgotten about our conversation of me going to Ouahgouya. He was OK with it, and just wanted confirmation of my well-being.
I think the time was about 17oo heures when Yvonne awoke, to which her friend also was leaving. Light was thinning out, making study difficult. Also it was time for us to get ready to head on down to the 18oo heure bus. With friend gone, Yvonne, her sister and I began walking to the bus. Most of the way was in mindless chit chat mode, that is excluding the reference to the school for natural construction. A school that seemed to use modern methods to construct the locals native, but modern, housing systems. Pallets were laid out, as were mud bricks and other construction material. It was at this point that Yvonne’s sister left us, and we went the rest of the way ourselves (ooh, the whole 600m)
Most of the ride was in more random, and pretty mindless conversation, and also me being the only white person on the bus, again. It was about 20.30 when we got back to the secondary bus station (there are two main bus stations, but the busses go randomly to one of them at the end of the trip) and it was at this point that Donat called again. I think he was getting a bit worried, which kind of makes sense now that I think about it. A white guy who could speak very minimal French, and even less Moore. I gave him the promise that I would get back before 22oo heure, and hope it would be closer to the 2130 mark.
This is where I was introduced to yet another traditional custom: The taxis. I know this process occurs in many places around the world, but it still freaks me out. Yvonne semi-haggled the guy in letting us come in his car, but the talking seemed to extend beyond this. Being the one customer experienced person that I am, I started to freak out when a random guy said a few words to the driver and just jumped on in. This then happened with an elderly lady, and she jumped on in the front passenger seat. What on earth was happening? Then the driver turned to Yvonne, said a few words and Yvonne kind of headed to the taxi too. A shared cab, how exciting, I always wanted to know how these things worked. Overall, these shared taxis seem to be a mix between a private taxi and a bus system. The city of Ouagadougou was also, unofficially I think, zoned off to allow for a more economic situation for the taxi drivers. From where we had been dropped off (in a reasonably isolated backstreet) we were able to find he taxi that I just told the little, confusing, situation.
From this first taxi, which covered, say the North zone and the central zone, we were dropped off at the grand roundabout with in Ouagadougou, to which we had to cross the manic road crossing, that was actually non existent, but there was no other way around to the following taxi zone. During the day this would be maybe at most a 3-5 minute wait. Being closer to 2130, we had more of a 20 minute wait. Standing here we were nearly tempted to get onto a bus that would bring us closer to our location, but still needing a rather extensive walk to follow. While heading to this alternative solution, a taxi went about trying to pick someone else, who was near us. With all of us jumping in, this was definitely one taxi ride to remember. I think per person, a taxi cost about 800 CFa. So, for the two of us to get two taxis came to a 3200 CFa situation. This was not what made it all the most amazing thing with the taxi situation, it was the fact that, while he was going along main roads only, he would stop along to see where potential clients would be going. By the way, the driver did not refuse a single person. By the time that Yvonne and I were trying to get out we had two clients in the one seat in the front and I think five in the back, how happy I was that I was in between two ladies (one being near 60 years).
Even though the adventure was a little hectic, I kind of enjoyed this environment, even though people who had not known each other were not actually talking to fellow strangers. But we had been dropped off at the main road and still had a good 400 metre walk ahead of us. In most cases this would have been an ease, but to think about doing this, in the dark, after the previous days storms, in the narrowest alleys that I did not even realise were for public use, well I have to admit, I was kind of freaking out. But within several minutes of the zigzagging passage, we had soon entered the right street less then 15 metres away from the final location (for Yvonne).
Saying hello and goodbye to the several people that were still active enough to allow for visitors, including the bike lender, bed lender and Yvonne’s sister, it was now time to go for the 30 minute bike ride. Getting to the street with Yvonne we hugged goodbye and her bike lender was suddenly standing there. I had no idea what this was for, until I began riding. Down the street there were no lights, this would have been a story in itself otherwise, but suddenly the area was softly illuminated and the, I wish I could say purring, noise of the engine was behind. On the bike was the lender and Yvonne. At the main road intersection, the lender went about getting some essentials at an ailment store (kind of a grocery store) and let Yvonne take the bike to follow me. It now felt like I was training for an event of some sorts, maybe the rusty, derelict mountain bike 7km race? Yvonne was always within 5 metres of my bike at a snails pace for a motorbike, but hammering along at a mountain bike pace.
I had managed to remember the exact path back, in reverse, to get to Reciproka, well kind of. I went a little too far on the longest straight, but managed to actually find a rough short cut, hooray. This burst of exercise was great, with muscles feeling the sudden need to want to rip out so much more activity. So, once again I gave Yvonne a hug goodbye, who said hello and goodbye to Donat. Yes Donat had waited patiently and due to not feeling well, as well as needing a few things to get done around Reciproka, Canazui and I were enlightened with his company for a couple of nights. Even if I forget to mention it in tomorrows entry, he was there in the evening, and did end up staying this night as well.
Overall, Donat was happy for my new experiences and ability to have more Burkinese culture to remember, especially as my time was coming closer to the end now.
